C'est la Vie
by the.eye.does.not.SEE
Summary: Mike got calls from bars every other week. He wished he could not pick up and not feel guilty for it, but he always felt guilty and he always picked up. Post-season 1.


**Universe**: _The Following_ present, post-1x15

**Author's Note: ** This story was inspired by that gif from season 2, of Ryan stumbling up to Mike in a bar and hugging him and almost knocking him over.

I've never written Mike before… Hopefully I've managed to keep him true to his character.

. . .

. . .

Mike got calls from bars almost every other week. Sometimes, it was a few weeks in a row, and every once in a while, it was bumped up to more than once a week. Occasionally, he went blessed weeks—and one time, an entire month—without a shrill phone call waking him up at 2 AM. But usually there was a phone call, with shouting in the background and an angry voice asking, _Is this Mike?_ The voice on the other end of the line was never the same one, because it was never the same bar the call was coming from. Once a bar had had enough of Ryan Hardy, they weren't likely to ever let him back in.

Fortunately for Ryan—and unfortunately for those who had to be around him in any capacity when he was drunk—there were a lot of bars in Brooklyn and even more across the river, in the other four boroughs of New York City.

Mike had briefly contemplated moving into the city, or at least closer to it, if only so that picking up Ryan would be less of a chore, but he'd ultimately tossed the idea away. When Mike felt self-pitying enough to complain about it—which was rare, as he always ended up comparing his troubles with Ryan's, and that man was always, always, _always_ worse off—but when he felt bad enough about himself to complain to others, he was always told that he didn't have to do this. He didn't have to answer his phone at one or two in the morning; he didn't have to drive out to dive bars in the middle of the night; he didn't have to keep himself at the beck and call of a man who only ever spoke to him when he needed something. And while Mike fantasized about cutting ties with Ryan Hardy—the man he'd studied and idolized for years and, yes, the man he had once aspired to be—he could never bring himself to actually do it.

He couldn't leave the man all by himself, no matter how frustrating and—frankly—infuriating he could be. Ryan didn't have anyone else to turn to, and Mike knew that better than most. Who would he call if he couldn't call Mike? Who did he have left that would bear the headache and the trip; who did he have left that would even _care?_

His sister Jenny had flown up from Florida for the funeral, all those months ago, but when she'd announced afterwards that she'd only bought a one-way ticket, and that she was staying with him now, Ryan had fought her on that as if his life had depended on it. Their argument had been long and loud and messy. Apparently they'd both said terrible things to one another, things that couldn't be taken back or even forgiven, because Jenny left on the first flight back to Miami after that, and, almost a year later now, the siblings still didn't speak to each other.

Not that Ryan really spoke to anyone anymore.

Even before, he had been a man of few words—and even less when he spoke about himself. But after… Well, it depended: on the time of night, on the type (and amount) of alcohol he ingested, on the date. That was really what mattered—from what Mike had learned so far—the date.

At first, in the early days following her death, he didn't speak at all. He didn't come to the door when Mike knocked, didn't answer the phone when he called, didn't even reply to text messages.

When he was asked to speak at her funeral—suggested to give her eulogy, by a priest who didn't understand the baffling intricacies and inherent contradictions of their relationship—Ryan hadn't even replied. He didn't even shake his head, in fact; he just turned and walked away and that was that. No one asked him to participate in the funeral again after that, and he attended the service like he was nothing more than a common acquaintance of the deceased; not the man who'd known her better than anyone else, the one who'd been made to watch her die right before his eyes in his own apartment.

Mike had presumed he'd never speak again—least of all about her—and he'd been right for a long time. Ryan didn't speak. But then, about a month later, he opened his mouth and proved Mike wrong on all counts, almost as if he'd known what Mike had been expecting.

It was the first time Mike had had to schlep out to Brooklyn to pick him up, and instead of being angry (like he was now), he was incredibly nervous and worried. He knew what it was about, of course, but he wasn't sure how to act; he didn't know what to say or what to do or even where to go. If Ryan had ventured out to a bar instead of drinking alone at home, Mike reasoned he probably felt a strong desire to stay away from his apartment, and wouldn't want to go back even if stay out meant wandering the streets. Even though he'd moved since the attack in his last place, Mike knew Ryan carried it with him whenever he went.

They had just made it to the car—Mike had had to park in a garage, about ten minutes away—and were both shivering in the late hours of a near-freezing February night. They both got in and sat down, and Mike was helping him with his seatbelt when Ryan spoke, his words entirely unbidden:

"She never approved of my drinking, you know."

Mike's hands jerked away from the seatbelt as if the material had sent an electric shock through him. Thankfully, Ryan hardy seemed to notice. It was dark in the garage, and dark in the car, so Mike couldn't be sure, but it looked like Ryan's eyes were closed as he spoke, almost as if he were sleeping. Or dreaming. Mike couldn't help but wonder how often he dreamed of her. Did he even ever go a night without thinking of her? Was the booze supposed to keep her away so she didn't haunt him, or did it help him keep her close, so she wouldn't slip away?

"She'd yell at me if she were here in your place. If she could see me, talk to me, she'd call me a coward. And an asshole too, probably." Half of his face lifted in a smile at that, like even vitriol would be welcome if he could only hear her speak. "An asshole coward hiding in a vodka bottle. Can't face his feelings. Can't move on with his life." He laughed then, but it was an ugly, humorless sound, full of self-mockery and self-loathing: "She always had me pegged, right from the start. Knew me better than I knew myself most of the time. Her and Joe had that in common, did you notice? They both saw right through me. Read me like a goddamn book." Mike couldn't breathe listening to him; he felt trapped, both here in this car and in this conversation. He watched Ryan nervously, waiting for him to snap; he knew it had to be coming, and he found he was genuinely frightened of it happening.

When the man finally opened his eyes, he surfaced like any other drunkard would—disoriented, uncomfortable, grouchy. His eyes were red, bloodshot. Ruined with equal doses of anger and grief, but eerily aware and focused on the man in the driver's seat. "Well, now Joe's gone, and so's she, and what am I? Still here," he spat out. "Still a worthless drunk. Same as I ever was. God," he said then, and smiled wistfully. His tone lightened at once, like the sun escaping from behind the clouds. "She'd be so angry if she could see me still. Furious." The smile faded as quickly as it had appeared, the clouds closing in again. "But it doesn't matter anymore, does it," he snapped flatly, "since she's dead."

The silence that followed went on and on after that for what felt like an eternity. Finally, when it was clear Ryan wasn't going to say any more, Mike started the car and backed out of his space.

"Let's get you home," was all he felt comfortable saying aloud. They didn't speak again that night, or in the weeks that followed. When they did start speaking again, neither ever mentioned what was said that night, and Mike never, ever dared to talk about her, not even when Ryan brought her up.

It had been over eight months since that first trip into Brooklyn, and in all those months, Mike could count the number of times Ryan had talked about his dead ex-girlfriend on one hand. He'd learned a variety of intimate details about the two of them in those few drunken admissions, and those memories always snuck their way back into the front of Mike's mind whenever he had to make another trip to the city to pick him up.

"_She was the one that started it, you know, between us. She liked to say it was me, that I was the one that pushed her to act, but that's not true. I just wasn't good at hiding my feelings, so she knew exactly how I felt already when she made her move. She still seemed nervous anyway, though. I always loved that about her. She could be so confident and demanding—scary, almost—but when she got nervous—she got nervous; she was like anyone else like that. It was the same way when she kissed me, right before she ran off. Demanding and then nervous. Nervous she'd said the wrong thing, or that I wouldn't feel the same… She wasn't nervous anymore when we got home after it all, though… But I suppose she should've been, shouldn't she? We both should've been, but we couldn't feel anything else but relief and… and peace. For two minutes, we were happy together. That's it. Some people get years together, some people get lifetimes; we got two minutes. But… That's what _some people get_, right? The short end of the stick. C'est la vie and "Shit happens" and all that crap."_

"_Once, when I was staying over and Joey was sick, she brought him to sleep with us in her bed. He was just a baby then; barely two. I told her I could go, so she wouldn't have to worry about me too… Can you guess what she said? She said she'd rather I stayed. It was the first time since my parents died that I felt like I had a real family. …Which is completely ridiculous, if you think about it. What a stupid thing to feel. _They _were a family. I was just a temporary houseguest, barely doing anything more than renting her bed. But she made me feel like family. She could do that to a person, you know, make them feel needed and wanted and… and like they belonged somewhere. She was sweet like that; considerate and—and compassionate. Kind. She knew I didn't have a place, or a family, and so she gave me one. Or tried to."_

"_I never wanted to leave her, you know. I never wanted to go. I just… I knew staying would be worse. I knew I'd only hold her back. And she'd be too nice to leave me. So I had to be the one to go, so she could have a real life and I could… Well, I could do what I'm doing now, I guess. I had always wanted her to have the better life. I thought she would, too. I thought I'd spend the rest of my life watching her be happy, watching her with someone else. Who'd'a thought she'd end up dead?"_

Mike located the bar easily—beneath the street level, it nested itself like a lost relic of older days. It had a wrought-iron fence leading down to its door, and a once nicely-crafted but since weathered wooden sign deeming it _The Stray Dog_, but the neon signs advertising Heineken and other beers ruined the quaint illusion for Mike. It was just like any other bar in any other part of the city. A bell tinkled, announcing his arrival when Mike pulled open the door, and it cut through the noise to create a moment of silence before—

"_Mike!"_

Ryan's voice was braying, happy, calling out to him from across the bar—and it immediately put Mike on edge. If there was one absolute about Ryan Hardy, it was that he was never happy. Even drunk, this was a bad sign.

"Hey, man," Mike mumbled, wordlessly bearing the brunt of the man's bear hug even as it threatened to knock him off his feet and spill the both of them on the beer-stained floor.

"_See_?" Ryan called, his voice triumphant—though slurred—as he spun around to grab the attention of whatever naysayer he'd been arguing with. Mike had to grab his arm so Ryan didn't fall over. "He came. He's a good guy, this one."

The bartender was one of many who glared back, but the only one that replied— grunting a wary "Uh-huh"—as if he didn't think Mike would actually get rid of him even though he'd showed up specifically to do just that.

"I sa—said," Ryan slurred, his voice loud, as if announcing his genius: "_Call my buddy Mike. He always picks up._"

"Yeah," Mike mumbled, trying to keep them both steady as Ryan leaned this way and that, "I always pick up." Mike wished the opposite were true. Mike wished he could not pick up. He wished he could let the phone ring and not feel guilty for it, but he always felt guilty and he always picked up. He always came, too, mostly because he knew no one else would if he didn't.

"They put me in the corner." Ryan wrapped an arm around Mike's shoulders, grinning over at him like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, and expected Mike to find it funny, too. He gestured vaguely to a spot in the back of the bar, his arm flying and almost knocking a waitress's tray over. She muttered _Asshole _with a scowl that told Mike she'd been on shift with Ryan here for far too long. "Can you believe that? They might as well have put a dunce cap on my head." His tone still sounded bemused, but Mike could tell it would turn sour and mean soon. He wanted to get Ryan out of here before that happened. He'd had to pay damages to bartenders before.

With some difficulty, he untangled himself from Ryan and made his way to the bar, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket to deal with the tab.

But the bartender waved his hand when he saw what he was trying to do. "No, no, no, your friend paid." His eyes wandered over Mike's shoulder, no doubt tracking Ryan behind him, fixed on him like he was some kind of potentially dangerous animal. Part of Mike didn't blame the man at all for the assumption. "Just get him out of here, would you?"

"I will," Mike promised. He left a twenty and a ten on the counter behind him—it was all he had in his wallet—and he hoped it was enough for the man's trouble.

Mike remembered the first day he'd met Ryan, watching him drink out of water bottles filled with vodka, and how that had worried him, to the point that he even spoke up about it. That was nothing compared to this, but now there was nothing to be said anymore; nothing that would change him or help him, short of resurrecting a dead woman.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mike looked Ryan over for injuries as he shepherded him out the door. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with him—his knuckles weren't even so much as scraped, and there were no bruises on his face—but Mike had learned not to be too careful. It had been a long while since Ryan had gotten into a barroom brawl, but that didn't mean much. If one person recognized him and said the wrong thing… Well, Mike had seen what happened to people who spoke of her in Ryan's presence.

Knowing Ryan's apartment wasn't far away—thankfully, Ryan had chosen to stay in the neighborhood for tonight—Mike led him down the mostly-empty Brooklyn streets. _Carried him _was probably more accurate than _led him, _however. Mike exhaled audibly with relief—and fatigue—when he looked up and finally saw the sign for Quincy Street; Ryan's place was just a half a block down.

Eventually, they arrived, and somehow made it up the two flights of stairs to Ryan's apartment, and got the door open. Mike expected the man to collapse the moment he saw he was in familiar surroundings, but when Mike turned around, Ryan was still standing—albeit leaning heavily on the wooden post that ran through the kitchen area of his apartment—and staring at Mike strangely.

"What?" Mike asked, his voice clipped. He was tired, annoyed, and—frankly—sick of having to keep doing this on a bi-monthly (or worse) basis. He wanted to ask Ryan when he had stopped being a high-functioning alcoholic and devolved into nothing better than a common, angry alcoholic—but Mike already knew the answer and he was not bitter enough to insult a man who had so little to live for already.

"I was just thinking about you…" Ryan peered at Mike, but leaned forward so far as he did so that he started to fall forward. Mike rushed towards him and managed to catch him before he hit the ground. Ryan found it all very funny, probably more so only because Mike didn't smile or laugh along with him. "I was thinking about _you_, and _your _life…" Ryan stared at him again, as if trying to glean some hidden bit of information by looking closely as possible into the man's eyes as Mike tried to stand him up again.

"What about my life?" Mike asked. His words were too curt, he knew, but he was losing patience as fast as he was losing interest. The quicker this conversation was over, the sooner he could leave, and get back home, and then try to sleep off this night like a bad dream as he had (futilely) attempted so many times in the past.

"You have a girl, Mike?"

Mike started, surprised by the question. He and Ryan had never discussed his personal life before—not _ever_. "No…" He answered slowly, trying to puzzle out where Ryan was going with this. It couldn't just be the random, meaningless ramblings of a drunk man; even when he was hammered, Ryan managed to still have _some _sense.

"You don't?" He sounded both surprised and affronted by the fact that Mike was single. "Why not?"

_Because I saw what having a girl did to you, _Mike almost replied, but managed to catch himself in time. His tone was significantly gentler than before when he replied, "Just haven't met anyone, is all."

Ryan snorted at that. Whether humorously or derisively, Mike couldn't tell. He didn't really want to know, anyway. "You should come down to the bar with me sometime," he offered, his words sliding together now more with fatigue than drink. (Though alcohol was, of course, a heavy factor.) "I could hook you up, you know."

Mike couldn't stop himself from laughing: "Oh yeah? You?"

He regretted the thoughtless, mocking reply immediately.

The silence that followed, on Ryan's part, made Mike genuinely fearful of his life. His heart was beating too fast for him to use it to mark the seconds, but he did anyway. After nearly a hundred frenzied _thump-thumps_ echoing frantically in Mike's ears, Ryan finally spoke.

"You get to the bar after they've all given up, so you don't see it. Early on, the ladies spot me—like a vulture spots a carcass. And they try to swoop in and well…" He sighed, shaking his head. "It'd be easy pickings for you, though, I bet," he continued a minute later, lifting his head again. "I guess you could call them hyenas instead—they always prefer live meat when they can get it. They'd flock to you faster than flies to shit."

Mike wasn't sure what to say to that, and so he did the smart thing and kept his mouth shut. He had never suspected Ryan of having female admirers before, and now he wondered why he had ever thought that to begin with. It wasn't like Claire Matthews had been the only woman in the world. Just because he'd been hung up on her didn't mean that he couldn't date other women, or that other women weren't interested in him. Some women wouldn't care if he used them as a distraction to get over her; a few probably used him as a distraction to get over their old flames, too.

"They'd be better off with you than me, anyway," Ryan continued, as if Mike had contributed something and Ryan was now agreeing to it. Slowly, his eyes fall to the floor as he leaned what looked like his entire weight against that pillar. "No girl deserves to be with a man who'd only be using her so he could imagine a dead woman in her place." He paused then, and only raised his head after some time. He blinked at the darkness around him until his eyes settled on Mike's face. His mouth was turned down in a worried frown. "That's pretty sick, isn't it," he muttered, as though the thought had just occurred to him.

_No, it's just sad, _Mike thought, and wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat.

"I'll let you go," Ryan said at length, hanging onto the pillar with one hand as he attempted to straighten himself up. _See, I'm sober, I really am, _his wobbly-but-determined posture strove to communicate_._ "Thanks for… you know, picking me up."

"No problem," Mike forced out. He wanted to say something else, but again he couldn't speak. He turned to the door, as angry with himself now as he'd been with Ryan before. It wasn't the man's fault, not really. He'd had more bad luck in his lifetime than most people ever dared to even contemplate.

Mike had made it to the door and even pulled the thing open before he forced himself to turn around. If he didn't say it now, the words would stew in his head until they erupted—and they needed a controlled release more than anything. Very aware of how far away Ryan was from him—which wasn't far at all—Weston began, his voice hardly louder than a whisper:

"I…I know she's not here anymore, she's not with you, but… _You're_ still here. You're still alive, Ryan. I think…" He took a breath, bracing himself for the wrath he knew would be coming. "I think she'd want you to act like that," he said, forcing down his fear so he could finish: "I think she'd want you to act like you're still alive."

Ryan kept his eyes on the floor for a while, for so long that Mike wasn't even sure his words had been heard. But finally, he spoke up. Ryan's voice cracked before he even got the first word out: "I—I'm worried she'd hate me if I tried to do that." He lifted his head, slowly, as if it was very heavy and had to be moved carefully. When their eyes met, Mike was shocked to see tears in Ryan's. "Why should I get to live when she's dead? Why—Why should I get to go on when she's gone? What have I ever done for anyone?"

_You've saved lives, _Mike wanted to tell him. _You caught Carroll three separate times; you saved probably hundreds of lives, maybe thousands, by getting rid of him. _But he didn't say any of it because there was one life he didn't save and that was the only one they were discussing right now, the only one that mattered. The only one that would ever matter.

"I… I still think she'd want you to keep yourself going," Mike answered, his words as shaky as Ryan's hands. Suddenly he felt very much like he needed a drink, and all at once, he understood Ryan's compulsion. The man lived every second of every day feeling like this, feeling tortured to his very core. Mike could see himself turning to booze, too, if he lived like this—if not to forget completely, then to at least dull his memories for a while.

"I think she'd want you to keep yourself going. She wouldn't…" Mike winced prematurely at his own choice of words, but he couldn't think of another way to say it: "She wouldn't want you to wallow."

To his surprise, Ryan grinned at the word. "You sound just like her, you know. _Wallow._" He chuckled. "She'd accuse me of doing the same thing. Then maybe give me a shove in the right direction."

Mike put his hands in his pockets. "_I'm_ trying to give you a shove in the right direction, you know."

Ryan smiled ruefully. For a minute, Mike was reminded of the high-functioning alcoholic he'd known just a year ago. "No offense," he hinted, "but I think you need the right touch."

Mike didn't dispute that. He hid himself behind his number-one rule once more: _Don't ever speak of her._

"I'm sorry you had to come out," Ryan told him, and once again—just like that—he was a drunk with the red eyes and the slurred speech and the hunched-over posture. "I know I've been making your life hell." He drew a hand over his forehead. "I wish I had someone else to call…" He trailed off. No other explanation was needed.

"It's okay," Mike forced out. He didn't want either of them to have to say the unspoken words: _There is no one else to call. _Why kick a man when he was already down?

"No," Ryan muttered, pushing himself off from the post and wobbling for a moment before miraculously standing straight. "No, it's not okay, Mike. But you're too nice to say otherwise… Too nice not to pick up. Too nice to cut me off like everyone else has."

"Ryan…" His words cut too close to home and it was making Mike nervous, so nervous that he couldn't even think of a proper rebuttal. "Come on, man…"

"I appreciate it, I do. But I hope one day you'll learn to do what I haven't—forget and move on." He turned towards his bedroom, stumbling his way through the dark. "It's probably the only good thing I'll ever teach you, you know. I'm full of life lessons, but they're all about what to do wrong, not right." Weak laughter came back to Mike from across the apartment. "I'm sure you've figured that out by now."

Mike watched him go, wanting to say something, wanting to do something, but he felt as impotent as he knew Ryan had at some of the worst points of the investigation. There was nothing he could do, or say, that would fix any of this. He was helpless.

Maybe he should just let go—forget and move on, like Ryan had said.

It was a tempting thought, but Mike knew it was nothing more than that. His phone would ring next week at one-thirty in the morning, and he would pick up and listen to a disgruntled barkeep threaten to throw Ryan out on the street or call the police unless he showed up, and then they'd go through this all over again.

Forget and move on wasn't an option—not for him, not for Ryan, not for anyone.

There was just _Keep living and try not to remember, _and sometimes not even that option worked too well.

Luckily, booze always helped. Ryan had taught him that. It had been one of his most valuable life lessons.

. . .

. . .

**Author's Note: **Okay, lay it on me. I'm a Mike Weston novice; I would love, love, love to hear how he came off! Thank you so much for reading. :)


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